Welcome to another chat and a cup of tea blog post. What can I pour you? A cup of coffee? Tea? Cocoa?

I’m having tea with honey today. Well, a little bit of honey because I am actually almost out of honey, but at least the tea is warm.

I thought I would share this post today because I finished up the serial story I usually share for Fiction Friday.

(Full Disclosure: Again, I will mention I fully stole this blog post idea from Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I am not ashamed to admit it.)

Would you like a snack with your beverage?

How about cookies? Oh. I don’t have any in the house.

I have crackers. That’s about it right now, but I’ll be sure to have cookies or better snacks next time.

Do you have snacks with your tea?

I don’t normally myself.

So last night I watched Signed, Sealed, Delivered For Christmas and sobbed through half of it. I guess it’s what I needed this week to remember all I have and all I could have lost last year. I watched it on my laptop while my daughter watched something else on the main TV and the boys did their own things. A couple of times The Boy and The Husband walked by and looked at me curiously. The Boy actually stopped and hugged me and then showed me a funny meme because he figured I needed cheering up. I wasn’t depressed, though, just touched by the movie.

I watched it on Peacock, but I believe you can also watch it on Amazon through their Hallmark channel.

 I felt like I needed happy things yesterday after becoming very down about the state of our word, and the sort of odd night I had Wednesday.

The odd night turned out okay, but it was a little draining, so I welcomed the mental break Thursday evening.

Now the story behind the odd night because I know you want to know (ha).

I take my daughter to Awana on Wednesday nights. We were running late because I dropped off food for my parents and four quarters for The Husband (who was at a meeting) to pump up his tire that was soft. I took Little Miss into the church and shut off the van and it started making weird noises – like an animal was running inside and thumping around. I turned it off and on a few times, and kept hearing it but couldn’t figure it out.

I decided it must be an animal inside the engine and pulled out my laptop to do some editing. That’s when my phone dinged and I looked down to see a message from The Husband telling me he’d blown a tire on the way home and was at my parents.

I joked with him to not breathe while there because my dad had had a cold. I immediately forgot I told him that because my mind was on the weird sounds in the car and how we were going to pay for the tire. So then I was thrown into a complete panic when I got this text from him:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

 “Lisa, I can’t not breathe” but I was so distracted I read “Lisa, I can’t breathe.”

He had some chest discomfort last week from reflux and for a few seconds I really started thinking he couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t call him because there is no service at the church, only WiFi. I told him to call an ambulance, but he wrote back, “Lisa, I’m at your parents. I’m fine.”

All I could think is that he wasn’t fine because he just told me he couldn’t breathe.

I’m freaking out at this point – thinking I am going to be a widow, but also trying to figure out how he’s texting so well if he can’t breathe.

After I urge him to call an ambulance again, he texts back “Lisa! Read what I wrote again.”
I scroll back and read: “Lisa, I can’t NOT breathe. I’m at your parents. I’m fine.”

I started laughing and crying because at that point because I was so relieved and felt so stupid at the same time. I was also wondering if I breathed in some fumes or something that made me that even more airheaded than normal.

I was still worried about the van so I moved it to an area of the parking lot where there was more light. I then went into the church and collected Little Miss a little early so we can go pick up The Husband at my parents.

I came back out and the van wouldn’t start. No kidding, In the past I would have probably started crying but I guess the small amount of CBD oil I have started taking each day had kicked in because I felt like laughing instead. Here we were with both of our cars out of commission in one night. It was a bit surreal and odd and sort of like a sitcom.

Long story short, a guy at the church looked under the hood and said he thought it might be the fuel pump.

In the end the van was actually out of coolant, but I was able to start it at the church and make it to my dad’s where he filled it up and sent us on our way.

The Husband will get a new tire today and hopefully we will have a break from car problems for a while.

The day before the weird car stuff, I received a package from Bettie G., a lovely lady and writer I met here in the blog world. She’s retired from blogging, but still has wonderful posts on the blog, which she has kept up. She’s also written a wonderful devotional type book called Abiding In Him: A Life Together in Ministry, which is the story of her and her husband devoting their lives various Christian ministries.

You can learn more about the book HERE and purchase copies HERE.

It will be something I can read this weekend while we stay inside, away from the cold weather. We aren’t getting the snow that cities north of us our getting, thankfully. We aren’t supposed to get any snow again until next week and I am fine with that.

We literally went from temperatures in the low 70s to temps in the 20s and 30s within two days. Blah!

A couple of inches of snow fell earlier in the week and in the first thirty seconds of stepping into it, Little Miss picked up some snow, packed it into a snowball and hit me in the face with it.

Yeah. I’m so excited for four more months of this.

The cats, who normally spend most of their time outside, have been only going out for short jaunts and then running inside, taking turns laying on my chest. They both have horrible timing and try to snuggle when I need to be doing something, like finishing dinner. This morning, the youngest came into the bedroom and fell asleep on my legs for two hours.    

The whole time I kept thinking, “I should move,” but then I would think, “But she doesn’t get to cuddle with me often and this is sort of nice.” In the end I just laid there while I pulled some old blog posts together that I plan to edit and share again later, posted and commented on Instagram, finished a chapter of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and complained to my husband via text that I couldn’t feel my legs anymore.

It has taken me forever to finish this blog post because I have been interrupted by various children, pets, and thoughts (plus I had to warm my tea a couple of times), but that’s how life goes, isn’t it? We often seem to get interrupted.

I had to order heating oil this morning – that was another distraction, sadly. It’s $4.89 a gallon right now and we needed to fill our tank so that should be a fun bill.

Despite the financial worries and worrying about various family issues, I am looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. We aren’t ready for Christmas yet, of course, but we are having fun getting ready to celebrate it by buying decorations and watching Christmas movies.

How about you? Are you getting into the Christmas spirit yet?

What has been going on in your world?